---
title: Ask them to tell thee." — Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Musc… · tree and pragmatics
description: Ask them to tell thee." Who acts: you. A sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/16/45/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collecti…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/) / [Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/16/) / 45

# Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6, sentence 45

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Ask them to tell thee."

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** ask, tell · **To what, where:** brothers, thee · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg22373:16:45
# text = Ask them to tell thee."
1	Ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	xcomp	_	_
5	thee	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	4	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | brothers *= brother* |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S\_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  | thee |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent thou=Recipient |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Project Gutenberg book 22373 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 44](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/16/44/)
- next →: [sentence 46](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/16/46/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter I. INTRODUCTORY, part 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg22373/16/)